


Partners

by coaldustcanary



Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015)
Genre: F/M, Getting Together, M/M, Multi, OT3, Partnership, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-25
Updated: 2019-12-25
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:47:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,160
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21929938
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coaldustcanary/pseuds/coaldustcanary
Summary: Illya Kuryakin has had partners before.But never ones like these.
Relationships: Illya Kuryakin/Napoleon Solo/Gaby Teller
Comments: 10
Kudos: 122
Collections: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. Winter Holiday Gift Exchange 2019





	Partners

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Just_another_shipper](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Just_another_shipper/gifts).



> Happy holidays! Lightly inspired by this quote from the Romance of the Rose, and what a tremendous prompt it was:
> 
> “The more a man gazes on what he loves, the more he sets fire to his heart and bastes it with bacon fat; this basting kindles and fans the fire that makes men love. It is every lover’s habit to pursue the fire that burns and inflames him, and when he feels the fire close by, he approaches even closer. The fire is his contemplation of his sweetheart, who causes him to be consumed by the flames: the closer he is to her, the more eager he is to love. Everyone knows this, both wise men and fools: the nearer a man is to the fire, the more he burns.”

_Istanbul_

It was not as if Illya had never worked with a partner before. In fact, he had partnered more agents than might have otherwise been expected for one with his experience. As an agent of precocious achievement and presumably dubious loyalty, thanks to his father's disfavor, it was considered important that he often had a partner and watcher at his side in addition to Oleg's brooding oversight. Though longstanding partnerships risked complicating emotions or complacency, there was a benefit to learning to accommodate the strengths and weaknesses of a known quantity in a familiar partner, as well. Many agents who performed only adequately while working alone found themselves becoming better at their jobs once they found a stable partnership. Despite Illya's dedication to demonstrating his excellence at every opportunity, his superiors still hoped that his few but marked weaknesses—most notably, his temper—might be mitigated by the right partnership. 

Illya had not lied to Solo outside the Vinciguerra’s warehouse; he did prefer to work alone. It was only that such experiences were the rare exception to a general rule. Often he would be saddled with a junior agent of limited experience and great deal of party loyalty, eager to report any weaknesses of character or performance observed in Illya to their superiors in return for future favor. Other times the fellow agent was competent and his senior, but of a markedly steady temperament, as if Illya could be treated like a fractious horse and yoked with a more sedate beast to keep from bolting or kicking. Frankly, both types of partners were a trial, and Illya often found himself using every skill at his disposal to minimize either kind of partner’s influence on his ability to complete the mission. Though Oleg had eventually seemed to learn to let him work alone when the situation called for it—Berlin had been infuriating and deeply embarrassing, but it would have been an even more blatant disaster if he’d had a partner to mind—the fact was, Illya had no idea what to do with a partner like Napoleon Solo, who was many things, but nothing like any other agent with whom Illya had been partnered.

(He studiously disallowed himself the opportunity to consider that one Miss Gaby Teller was even further removed from his experiences with a partner, and that she was just as much his partner these days as Solo, so far as Waverly was concerned. There was a limit to the number of “complicating emotions”—as his trainers would have termed them—that he could weather in a single day.)

Honestly, the American Cowboy was managing to confound him quite well enough on his own.

“What are you doing?” Illya hissed between barely-parted lips as Solo sauntered in his direction, jacket casually tossed over a shoulder and his sleeves rolled up to his elbows in deference to the late afternoon heat. Grudgingly, Illya could acknowledge that Solo was attracting attention, but he was supposed to be attracting attention _away from his partner_ , not ambling directly for Illya’s inconspicuous position while _ruining the lines of his shirt_ with careless grace.

 _“Vassily! It is you, my God, has it been so long?”_ Solo cried in Russian, affecting an expression of pleased surprise and an atrocious accent. Illya was caught gaping. Solo’s Russian was fluent enough that in casual or brief conversation he might be mistaken for a native speaker, though extended or specialist discourse would reveal his limitations with the language. But he’d inflected even those few words awkwardly, and was grinning like an idiot besides. It caught Illya unawares, enough that Solo clapped his hand around Illya’s shoulder and dragged him from his studied casual lean into a brisk walk directly toward the church across the street. After a beat he nodded as if in response to something Illya had said, and leaned closer, his arm now wrapped firmly around Illya’s shoulders.

“Trust me. Change of plan,” Solo breathed into his ear. The words were barely audible, and followed hard by a laugh, and even forced it had a charming, friendly tenor as they walked together like the closest of old friends. Solo kept up a nattering of mild, friendly conversation, to which Illya only needed to occasionally nod or hum agreement. Illya found his shoulders tensing as they approached the museum’s main doors. He needed to get inside, but they had discussed their plan in detail this very morning. Solo was to cause a scene just outside the church’s front gate, drawing the attention of the guards long enough that Illya could scramble up and over the side wall to gain access to a wing of the church being renovated for visiting tourists but currently out of bounds to the public. While Solo had argued for being the one to go over the wall, his skill set would be required to get Illya back out again through a tunnel corridor that could not be unlocked from the inside, even with his prodigious skills. And so Illya was to retrieve the dropped files while Solo caused a scene, and then hope that Solo would be there to let him out again, barring any unexpected alarm systems.

(“Low blow, Peril.” “Yes, it was aimed as such.” “ _Ouch_.”)

But Solo apparently had other plans.

“ _Come, my friend, I have someone I want you to meet,”_ Solo said, offering a casual little wave to the church museum guards as they passed through the main doors. Illya’s stride only hitched a little as Solo maneuvered them toward the far corner of the church entryway, where thronging tourists purchased tickets to view the many mosaics and frescoes within. They avoided the milling crowd, Solo winking and nodding in a knowing way at the employee who halfheartedly moved in their direction as if to block their path.

“It’s fine, it’s fine, we’re just seeing Aydin, we’ll be just a moment…” Solo said, waving the man off and dragging Illya bodily into a small office inhabited by a slight man behind a desk that dominated the room. He looked up and his eyes widened in unfeigned shock as the limited space in the cramped office was suddenly filled by a cheerful American and a silent, looming Russian.

“Mr. Deveney, what a surprise!” he said, pushing to his feet. This Aydin was dressed carefully and neatly, though in style a decade out of date. He had the half-harried, half-keen look of many academics Illya had known. He also turned a look on Solo that was starry-eyed, to say the least, and when Solo smiled charmingly and begged Professor Demir for a personal tour for his good friend and acquaintance Vassily, and described how significantly good old Jack Deveney would be in his debt for such a concession, Illya began to see the shape of his partner’s plan.

Later that night, as they sipped scotch on the hotel balcony, the retrieved file already in Gaby’s capable hands as she arranged its drop and transport to Waverly, Illya nodded reluctantly, as if coming to a long-weighed conclusion. Solo shot him a considering look, but remained (somehow) silent.

“Was good plan, Cowboy. Even changed without warning.” Solo’s eyebrow lifted slightly.

“It would have been good to know that this man you know was working at the museum before that final moment, but this way was much better, safer. It was well done,” Illya admitted.

“Well, thank you, Peril.”

“You would not have had time to disable the alarms, anyway,” Illya continued archly, even as Solo groaned and shook his head.

“Never change, partner,” Solo sighed, leaning back in his chair, though his expression was fond, even warm in the last light of the late summer sunset. Illya covered his surprise at the friendly rejoinder and his own answering smile with a slow blink, turning his attention briefly out toward the city spread below their balcony with a thoughtful expression. It was like Rome all over again, he realized belatedly, though so much had changed even in a few short weeks.

Somehow, that thought wasn’t as unsettling as it should have been, and he found himself watching Solo from the corner of his eye, not at all certain how to describe the feeling settling in his chest. Satisfaction for a job well-done, relief at the avoidance of danger, pride in the mission’s completion and in his partner’s ingenuity…and something more besides.

* * *

_New York_

Illya had been to America before; not often, and not for long, but his superiors had made a point of giving him a diplomatic identity a few times before so that he could experience the specific flavor of decadence the United States offered. It was the sort of brief, targeted experience that served as a reminder of everything wrong with American excess and degeneracy. Illya had found those visits mildly distasteful, useful exercises in hearing accents at work that he would have to recognize and potentially mimic in his work, and otherwise best completed swiftly, so that he could return to more important duties.

He found America very different with Gaby by his side. She had taken to the city with a mix of nervous energy and reckless abandon that he found unsettling. Despite her years in service to Waverly and British intelligence, her circumstances had prevented her from seeing more than East Berlin for all of her adult life. Rome had been a very sudden starring role. Istanbul had given her opportunities to put her hard-won skills to use. London had been an awakening—an opening to reach out and take things she had wanted, whether it was a new record or any of a dozen brands of jam for her breakfast toast.

And New York was big enough that it might have dwarfed her, but Gaby apparently found it only the perfect amount of room to stretch her wings. She teased Illya mercilessly for his disapproval, and grilled Solo like a police interrogator for all that she could learn about the city. Though she was paired with Illya again as part of their cover, she did all that she could to rebuff both him and Solo to spend time on her own absorbing America on her own terms. Though they had time to explore, as always, the mission came first, and though there were many places a pair like them—ostensibly a Soviet émigré and his dutiful Ossi wife—would be both unwelcome and out of place, there were a number of Russian immigrant communities in the city where they could blend in a little. So they played the recent newcomers testing newfound freedoms, trying earnestly to shed the appearance of tourists and become knowledgeable about their new home.

“Ursula, my dear, we must go,” Illya said in sturdy English, that of a scientist who had communicated in the tongue for a long time, and was ready to trade Russian for a new _lingua franca_. He gathered up Gaby’s hand to curl around his arm, helping her to her feet from the park bench where they had stopped to rest, ever the solicitous spouse.

“My good husband,” she cooed, her smile sweet but her eyes dancing with some kind of mischief as she leaned into his arm. She was a steady press of heat all along his side despite the autumn chill, her nose and cheeks pink from the wind, as they stepped out onto the sidewalk. This area of the city was home to large numbers of Russian and Ukranian immigrants for decades, and their presence was unremarkable. Illya had stayed in a tiny apartment not far from where they now walked on one of his previous “diplomatic” missions nearby, in fact. Their cover was as good as they could hope for as they kept an eye on Adam Kenworthy, the suspected rogue FBI agent making contact with a Russian criminal organization just down the block.

Kenworthy, on the other hand, stuck out like a sore thumb.

(“An embarrassment to his country and his agency,” Illya had huffed over their reports last night. “Probably,” Solo had agreed, propping his feet up on the low table and studying a stack of photographs with idle curiosity. “Suddenly I like him more.”)

The memory of Solo’s grin at Illya’s indignant huff was nearly as warming as the squeeze of Gaby’s hand around his forearm. She stopped suddenly, halting him and pulling him around to stand in front of her, blocking the wind. Gaby leaned her cheek against his chest, sighing as if taking relief from the cold, and murmured under her breath.

“Don't go. He’s looking this way.”

Illya looked down at her fondly, though the tension suddenly stiffening his shoulders made the act a little strained, and pulled up the hood on her jacket, making a show of adjusting it carefully. He angled his body so that Gaby would have a clear view of the street around him, but shielding her from Kenworthy’s gaze. After a long moment, she stepped back.

“Come on, _meine Liebe_ , that’s enough, we’re going to be late,” she said sweetly, pulling him along the sidewalk once more as he followed with a besotted expression. Such displays of affection should have been more awkward, but they were altogether too easy when playing Gaby’s fiancé or husband, he found. Particularly in places where public affection such as these small touches was expected, the performance was so far from their stilted, if intense, interactions in Rome that it seemed like far longer than the mere months it had been since their partnership had begun.

As they hurried their steps enough to pass briskly by their target, Gaby slipped a bug into the man’s jacket pocket so smoothly it took until her small nod to confirm that it had been done. It was too easy, Illya realized as they strolled arm-in-arm, to watch Gaby as if she was the only woman in the world.

Remembering that she was his partner and not his fiancée was harder, even with all of the practice.

* * *

_London_

It was full winter before Waverly gave them more than a moment of rest between missions. He grudgingly allowed them a week during which he promised, barring a very immediately pressing world-ending plot, they would have their freedom, and time to settle into their accommodations in London for more than a night or two of exhausted sleep or nursing minor injuries. Illya might have suspected Waverly of something approaching sentiment to have given them the week that included Christmas two days hence, except of course Illya himself did not celebrate the holiday and Gaby’s disinterest was the studied lesson of her upbringing, just beginning to wear away.

“So it’s not about Christmas, fine,” Solo had finally said in response to Illya’s uncertainty and Gaby’s tentative excitement. “That doesn’t mean we can’t spend some of our break together. Dinner. Wine. No presents. Just a quiet evening in as colleagues on Christmas Eve. You kids can spend the rest of the time however you like,” he’d added cheerfully as Illya glanced between his partners with a furrowed brow, getting the sense that Solo was somehow making a joke at his expense.

“But tomorrow, I’ll see you both at my place,” Solo had pronounced with finality.

Stubborn loyalty to ignoring the commercialized holiday zeal of the decadent west combined with the expectation of keeping the evening touched with professional distance fought nobly with Illya’s sense of politesse. Politesse won and he ended up walking to Gaby’s flat to escort her to Solo’s apartment with a bottle of wine tucked under his free arm despite his best efforts. Gaby had accepted his offer of an escort and taken his arm with the same comfort as on a mission. Solo had greeted them with a smile that eased the tension in Illya’s shoulders as he handed over the wine bottle with a self-depreciating smile. Gaby glanced between them and loosened her hold on Illya.

“Mine,” Gaby pronounced, taking the bottle from Solo’s grip and stalking for the kitchen to root through drawers for the bottle opener, to Solo’s evident amusement.

“I guess some things don’t change,” he observed, following Gaby back into the kitchen to tend to a pot bubbling on the stove.

“It’s still not chic,” Gaby huffed.

“Nor a hotel,” Solo agreed. They grinned at one another, something shared between them, and Illya felt more than a little lost. The conversation was beyond him, but so was everything else, it seemed. He stood at the entrance to the kitchen, looking between his partners with something that prickled in his chest almost painfully. This was too comfortable. This was too easy. He was becoming something he no longer recognized, all because these people, his partners, made him so. His breath caught in his throat, he swallowed convulsively, suddenly uncertain.

"This was a mistake. I will go." Illya muttered, turning away from both Solo and Gaby's surprised faces to retrieve his jacket and fumble for the door.

"Illya-"

"Peril, wait-"

Still wielding a corkscrew like a weapon (and more than capable of using it, he knew) Gaby threw herself bodily in between Illya and the door, scowling up at him, fingers of her empty hand splayed on his chest, while Solo wiped his hands on a kitchen towel before reaching for Illya's shoulder, clasping it warmly. Illya wavered on his feet. It was good, standing between them, in this cozy and close place. The apartment smelled of cooking meat and spices. He wanted to sit, he wanted to taste the wine, and the food, and the plush of Solo's comfortable-looking furniture. He wanted to see Gaby drink and dance, see Solo cook and charm. He _wanted_.

And it was too much. His eyes fell closed and he let himself imagine it for a moment before pushing it firmly away, and settling his hands on Gaby's shoulders to move her gently aside. But instead he found himself clutching her, unwilling to let her go, and leaning back into Solo's arm with a soft, broken sound of frustration.

Gaby responded by hooking her fingers in his jacket collar and pulling him down into a kiss. It was gentle, but he couldn't have shaken loose from her if he tried. Distantly, he felt Solo's hand on the back of his neck, easing the corkscrew loose from between Gaby's fingers.

"Don't go," Gaby breathed against his mouth, punctuating it with a soft bite at his lower lip.

"Trust me," Solo said softly over his shoulder, breath warm on his neck.

"Trust _us_ ," Gaby countered pointedly, arching a brow at Solo, who responded by wrapping an arm around them both and pressing his mouth in a teasing kiss on Illya's jaw, and then leaned to nuzzle at Gaby's ear as she gasped softly, cheeks warming. Illya smiled.

It was not as if Illya had never worked with partners before. But this time was promising to be a much different and better experience.

**Author's Note:**

> Hi l love these three so much; feel free to come talk to me about these disaster bisexual spies and their feelings anytime [on Tumblr](https://coaldustcanary.tumblr.com).


End file.
